Artist Spotlight: Ian H Watkins

Many people will know Ian as “H” from Steps, a band who are still celebrated as one of the best-loved pop groups since the 1990’s. Fewer people will know that painting came first. Raised in the Rhondda, Ian was given his first set of watercolours at six and spent his early years sketching the mists and mountains around his home. He’d earned a place at Cardiff School of Art & Design and was about to start when Steps came along, taking him on a different path (you can read more here).

Art never left him, though. Returning to painting has been less of a reinvention and more of a homecoming. As Ian put it in this interview with Creative Business News, “Every time I create a painting it’s a way of reconnecting with my roots and evolving as an artist.”

Ian works primarily in acrylic, building richly layered surfaces that reward time spent with them. To this he adds pastel, charcoal and touches of gold leaf, there to catch the light as your eye moves across the canvas. He also often works sand or soil from into the paint, meaning these aren’t just pictures of a place, they hold a little of the landscape too. This tactile approach means you’re not just admiring a scene, but being drawn into a place.

Ian's inspirations include Kyffin Williams and contemporary Welsh painter Elfyn Lewis. And with his understanding of colour and shape, he creates landscapes that are both strong and calm.

Viewers often respond first to the way Ian handles light. It isn’t just “bright” or “dull” - it changes, softening, and then sharpening as it moves across the landscape. It’s incredible how he achieve these shifts in lighting that mirror the Welsh landscape and experience: weather that arrives quickly, colours that change by the hour - or even minute, and a landscape that sometimes seems to slip into the shadows.

That doesn’t mean you’ll find a grey Wales here, these landscapes are vibrant and inviting. They’re so immersive that you might need to wrap a scarf against the chill, convinced you can hear the sound of the waves. These paintings somehow manage to feel both specific (to Wales) and personal (to your sense of home, travel, and memory), and that really is quite special.

The Welsh have a word for it: hiraeth, a longing for home and belonging that doesn’t quite translate into English. It’s a feeling runs through everything Ian paints.

His popularity is surely thanks to the accessibility of what he paints. Even without knowing Wales intimately, you can recognise the mood in a piece and understand it. Ian’s paintings aren’t to be admired from a distance, they meet you closer to your own experience, and you’ll likely find yourself thinking of a place you once visitied, a view you remember, even a feeling you couldn’t quite name until you saw it painted.